Jamie Adams

Count to 144 with two hands

Turns out that I’ve been counting with my fingers wrong for my whole life.

Europeans usually count with their hands by treating each finger as a single digit, up to a maximum of ten – unless they’ve been intimate with farm machinery. In other countries, instead of counting fingers as single digits they use the thumb to count the three sections on each of the four remaining fingers, allowing them to count to twelve on one hand.

The same trick is used on the other hand, but this time keeping track of the counts of twelve and taking you up to 144.

Mentioned elsewhere:

@jamie remember someone trying to sell this to me as a good idea in school. It’s fine, but it being 12s… I couldn’t really use it quickly. I tweaked it to base 10.Thumb stays as 1, thumb-to-fingertips 2-5, thumb-to-middle knuckle 6-9